“We have been unaware of this alleged NSA program
targeting our products,” said Kristin Huguet, a spokeswoman for
Apple. “We will continue to use our resources to stay ahead of
malicious hackers and defend our customers from security
attacks, regardless of who’s behind them.”

Appelbaum, an independent researcher, said at a conference
yesterday in Germany that an NSA program called DROPOUTJEEP was
tapping into Apple’s data. His comments followed a report by
German news organization Der Siegel that detailed the spy
agency’s ability to access data on smartphones.

The Der Spiegel report said the NSA has penetrated products
from U.S. technology companies including Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO) and
Dell Inc. Cisco, the world’s biggest maker of computer-networking equipment, issued a statement on Dec. 29 saying that
it’s “deeply concerned” about the government agency’s attempts
to exploit technical weaknesses in its products to gather
electronic communication data.

“At this time, we do not know of any new product
vulnerabilities, and will continue to pursue all avenues to
determine if we need to address any new issues,” Cisco said on
its website. “If we learn of a security weakness in any of our
products, we will immediately address it.”

Apple, Facebook Inc., Google Inc. and Yahoo! Inc. were
among a group of technology companies that asked President
Barack Obama on Dec. 17 to restrain spy programs exposed by
former NSA contractor Edward Snowden in June and let them
disclose the extent of government prying into their data.